Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationReally intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.

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Jan 31, 2011

"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy, only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is." - Willa Cather

This week marks the seventh year of the Crossroads Dispatches blog. Specifically the big b-day will be this Sunday, February 6th. Beginning yesterday I've been doing a retrospective of the last seven year's worth of themes in my head (it's significantly been reinvented over and over the last seven years).

Then, I was thinking forward to the vision onward, and why you might care to spend your precious life--be it even five minutes of it--immersing yourself here on any given day.

I don't write to write as many authors do (if I did, I'd have written a book by now). I write for the potential of creative interaction, for feedback loops building off each other, for the mutual sounding board, for collaboration. It's a bit easier to do this online because of the inherent design and nature of the Internet than, say, a poetry chapbook.

This vision thing is going to evolve and develop over the course of the week. Currently, I think I'd like to delve into the theme of abundance. Abundance in the broadest conception of that word--even to the point of being about wholeness, and inclusivity.

So how does it relate to the opening quote and to truthfulness? It's a half-baked hunch. There'll be a point to this rambling surely by the blog birthday. It's just not fleshed out yet.

Yesterday, I thought to myself: "It's brave to admit to global audience you have $2.99 in your bank account." Admittedly, it's not that uncommon especially for bootstrapping entrepreneurs, or anyone taking risks. Yet, somehow instinctually I know it is a taboo to mention your bank account balance aloud, in public, in North America unless it's in upper strastopheres. It's even taboo in private one-on-one to anyone besides a close confidant.

I sense I've been hoarding. I've been holding back the gems of my life from this blog. I've been holding back the coarse black coal as well. It's appears safer to stick to middle ground stuff. Mind my P's and Q's. You know, don't rock the boat.

My dream was once--and maybe it still is yet I'm also putting everything on the table for re-inspection--to be in a moai.

What's a moai? Without looking it up online, off the top of my head, to me it's having a clan that mutually supports each other emotionally, mentally, financially--in every realm, yet we don't reside together in a commune nor an ashram. In the financial sense, we'd pool money together to invest in each other's dreams to see them come into fruition. Sometimes it feels like a pretty naïve concept--especially in the West where everyone appears to prefer to be an island (nod to John Donne). (It's funny that moais developed on an island, and in the East.)

Interrelated, I was intrigued by this passage quoted below--specifically, the PLANTING SEEDS sentence. The vision of this blog I have going forward may have to do with planting seeds, letting life live and thrive. Not in the sense that I am planting seeds into your head (I've an aversion to persuasive writing as it feels controlling). Without further ado, here's the passage:

"If You Eat the Rich, You Will Soon StarveLet's assume we take $1 billion away from the wealthy and redistribute it to the working poor, the below-middle class families struggling to make ends meet. This will result in each family getting, let's say, a hundred bucks. What will each family do with this windfall...

Will they rush to Wall Street to invest it in ways that create venture capital to launch new businesses and support new product invention, thus creating new jobs and exportable goods that help to balance trade?...

Will they run out and use it to buy investment real estate? Will they fund medical research or universities? They will not. [The author says it'll mostly goes to "necessity" purchases and to lowering debt.] It will not be planted as seeds to grow in ways that enhance the economy and its ability to provide jobs, better jobs, health care, or community development, nor will it be invested in ways that make a difference in the individual's family life. That is the cold, harsh reality."

[Here the author does an aside, although relevant to me as I've spend a good chunk of time living in post-Katrina New Orleans, and riffs on the corruption and waste of government funds allocated to the Gulf Coast for rebuilding. . .] "However, private investors from Donald Trump to countless individual entrepreneurs, and private individuals like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, have been getting things done and are having positive impact--with private money.

Taking money away from the rich accomplishes nothing positive for anybody. Leave those same billion dollars in the hands of the wealthy, and most will get invested, some will be put at risk, in ways that do create or expand businesses, fund medical research, hospitals, and universities, create jobs, create better jobs, and in countless ways, benefit everybody. Because the affluent already have their needs met, additional money placed in their hands tends to be, in large part, invested, in other part, spent on goods and services. Money passing through affluent hands is jet fuel for the economy." - No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent, by Dan Kennedy

I'm sure all of us have a point of view on the above passage and have our own list of pros and cons as well as truths and fallacies of these statements. For me, the intriguing part are the questions that arose, including these 3 questions:

1. What have I done with my money the last two years when I was living below poverty level. Did I plant seeds and "spread the wealth"? Did I primarily subsist, stay afloat in self-preservation survival mode as the author assumes?

2. What would I do with $100 now after having considered this? Anything different?

3. What if I gave away $100 to someone--perhaps someone reading this blog this minute? What if I gave YOU precisely $100? Would you use it to plant seeds? How?

Serendipitiously, yesterday I was skimming Chris Guillebeau's book, The Art of Non-Comformity at the bookstore, and he specifically talks about starting a business for $100 and cites a few solid examples.

When I got home, I went to Chris Gullebeau's website, and there's a new forum called, The $100 Business Forum (so actually it'll cost $200 to launch your project, as it's $100 to register).

So I'm curious in the interest of an experiment, let's call it (to be a little facetious) The Eat The Rich Experiment, how you'd use an extra $100? Recall, the above passage also includes "invested in ways that make a difference in the individual's family life," so don't feel constrained to start a business; there's many types of seeds. Share your answers below.

p.s. SoHo (New York City) is a pretty good example that sometimes broke, yet visionary and edgy artists do plant seeds that yield fruit; see The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid. (Not that I'm necessarily advocating being a penniless bohemian. And not that I'm not. It's your life.)

Jan 25, 2011

"Einstein said that the most important question that a human being could ask is, Is the universe friendly?" I pause to let that question sink in. Whether for my benefit or his, I'm not sure.

"I don't know what the answer to that question is," I continue, "yet I'm going to live as if the answer is Yes."

He looks up from his perch on the tawny Indian motif rug. He stops petting our golden lab, Taz.

"I can see how that might work for you," he replies, "but I can't do that." That's the turning point instant when I knew that the separation he instigated was going to be a divorce.

"This is a journey to be taken, not studied." - Jed McKenna

Fast forward from that scene in summer 2002 to autumn 2003: I'm on the phone with someone coordinating an upcoming Miguel Ruiz workshop. "Great news," she says. "You're no longer on the waiting list. Do you still want to go to Teotihuacan with us?"

I stammer, "Yes!" It's only 15 days away. I have no plane ticket to Mexico. Not to mention, I have no way lined up to pay for said airline fare, nor the additional roughly $1500 for the workshop fees.

"I'll be sending you the details in the mail. There's not much there. Don Miguel doesn't tell participants what's involved in the workshop, nor outline any itinerary. The whole point is to be learn to be comfortable going into the Unknown," she explains. Perhaps appropriate for a place on Earth that the Toltec shamans call, "the place where men become Gods."

"There doesn't have to be a someone on the journey for the journey to continue." - Adyashanti

It had never occurred to me that there was no synopsis of the workshop on Miguel's website. I'd just read Beyond Fear (which interestingly enough is not listed on Don Miguel's home page collection of books right now...), and immediately searched for his website, saw the workshop--and knew inside that this was what I wanted. I jumped at the chance too as I had hunch that Miguel himself would not be leading any more of these excursions, which has proved to be true as he's handed the baton to his sons in the ensuing years.

All that excitement... all to find out that I was too late. The workshop was sold out. I was placed on a long waiting list, and promptly forgot about it--until the phone call from out of the blue (see above).

"There are two emotions that inform and animate the human animal; fear and a gratitude-love-awe mix that might best be called agape. As fear goes out, agape comes in. More accurately, a pure white light of consciousness hits the prism of self and splits outward to become the universe as we experience it. If the prism of self is gray and murky with ignorance, choked with fear, contaminated with ego, then so becomes the universe that radiates out from it. It's that simple. As the prism becomes free of such flaws, then the whole universe changes with it. It resolves into clarity, becomes brighter, more playful and magical. Because we are the lens through which it is projected, we are participants in its shape and motion; co-creators of our own universe."- Jed McKenna, Spiritual Warfare

INVITATION: Having observed online behavior for twenty years (not an exaggeration, just been part of the Internet from early on), I think blogs are best suited for skimming. For those eager to take a plunge a couple of octaves richer, I'm sharing a new private newsletter called, Encanto. (It's more of an interior, vertical journey than may be implied.) There will be 12-20 issues per month. I'm being purposefully vague as your own radar can discern for you your decision whether to embark with us.

UPDATE 01-27-10: I've a new hunch (sharing soon) on how to share this new project, and still keep it in public view on the Web, rather than a private newsletter.

p.s.Of course, I did go on Miguel's trip, after all. In fact, I ended up extending the journey for another six weeks and wended my way through Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras solo (well, I started solo... as these type of journeys do gather up fellow voyagers along the way).

p.p.s.Maybe I'm just being chicken-shit and should have posted the photo into this post. Link may or may not be "safe" for workplaces. Depends. Anyhow, beautifulartwork I found titled "Duet-Incanto" (you'll have to click to fourth photo in the lineup--the azure and flesh one) by Kim Joon.

Jan 14, 2011

This morning I woke up, and wondered how many people think, "Another day, so many problems to solve, and a world to fix."

I doubt children wake up that way.

It's play!

It's mystery to explore and the unknown to throw yourselves at.

When I go walking, I pretend everything isn't quite so serious and solid, I sit down and play with a pile of raw umber and burnt sienna rocks. While arranging them into a star, I stay to watch a black beetle navigating the same ledge as my sculpture.

At the playground, young tykes were playing soccer, and the goalie squeals, "A unicorn got caught in the net!" Other kids came scurrying over.

I wondered too if the Japanese and Chinese are right, and there are three soul centers, then perhaps the mind center is masculine, the belly feminine, and the heart center is the offspring: the innocent wonder of a child.

A week ago I was surfing Kickstarter (after I saw that $1M funding for the iPod Nano watch kit). Lo and behold futzing around on "Brooklyn" category I come across a whimsical, unscripted, improv film project featuring kids and their random mysterious objects that they are find along the way, called Spirit Ship.

"As scientific research has shown, the time young children spend participating in open-ended imaginative play has a direct effect on their brain development. Complex extended make-believe play is characterized by invented (both fantastical and seemingly very real) scenarios and characters, often takes place while children are outside of their classrooms and homes... [C]hildren are becoming lost in a series of hoops adults have laid out for them to jump through." - Spirit Ship: a mysterious short film narrated by children, Kickstarter project backing proposal

Spirit Ship video below:

In "scratching my own itch," I'm working on creating an imaginative, inquisitive overlay to the game of life, rather than defaulting to the typical interpretive overlay. I am so feeling that make-believe and what-if is the spirit of the whole thing (I'm not 100% sure how it'll manifest...it's a Mystery).

Just play as we go along. Purposefully deliriously silly if need be. Look at it as MYSTERY!! Rather than.... this is the way things have always been, and it is very very serious and heavy. Oh well.

Just imagine whatever you want to and say it is so: There is a unicorn in your soccer net.

"You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world. "- A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book via Little Augury blog

Jan 13, 2011

This isn't about "accidents", nor white-water kayaking (a sport I once partook in), nor rivers. This is about the downstream current of life. This is about death. This is about getting to the point where one fully trusts that gravitational pull in the black hole of your belly. This is about how I never surrendered to the divine, to that black hole, last year. Maybe once. Okay, maybe twice. Piss poor for an explorer, really.

I watered down every single idea I had last year to make it palatable to investors or voters (think Pepsi Refresh or Kickstarter) or potential clients. When the whole point in the first place was the first descent--an expedition that had never been attempted before, not pursuing the safe and sure. This is about how the real danger is resisting where the flow takes you. This is about being gutsy.

I give up. It's just going to be a small tribute from what Hendri himself and a friend wrote of his life.

What comes next in the weeks and months ahead shall be infused with some of his spirit and joie de vivre.

Hendri Coetzee was kayaking in Africa with a few other world-class river runners on a private expedition. "He led the first source-to-sea exploration of the Nile River in 2004 and opened up many waterways for kayak travel throughout Africa." - MSNBC, 12/21/10

"It is hard to know the difference between irrational fear and instinct, but fortunate is he who can. Often there is no clear right or wrong option, only the safest one. And if safe was all I wanted, I would have stayed home in Jinja. Too often when trying something no one has ever done, there are only 3 likely outcome: Success, quitting, or serious injury and beyond." - Hendri Coetzee's last post on instinct and "feeling" one's way

I believed it'd be all icing on the cake after near death on December 26, 2004--and all my days ever more would feel like an "extra" extension. Yet it is easy to take life for granted and to settle into other people's rhythms even for someone that writes a post titled, If Not on the Day I Die, Then Not Today."

"The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly." - Erasmus

I originally read of Hendri's life, and his death on the Vagabonding blog. The entire post is worthwhile, and this excerpt of his friend's first meeting with Henri touched me:

"From the moment I met him, nearly ten years ago, I was awed by Hendri’s incredible physical courage coupled with his profound quest for truth and meaning in life. At the time I was working in a remote safari camp on the Tanzanian coast, living in a hut, with nothing but raw nature for a hundred miles in any direction. Hendri rolled up off the beach and introduced himself. He was sunburned and loaded down with survival gear—yet inconspicuous and nonchalant, as if on a leisurely Sunday stroll through the mall. He had trekked that wild stretch all the way from Kenya, braving every manner of life-risking obstacle (particularly the many hippo-, croc-, and shark-rich delta fordings) by himself. After I uncorked my nicest bottle of wine, we stayed up way past our bedtimes debating what was the most important invention in the past two thousand years (he suggested it was the rudder, I said printing press). In the morning we exchanged contact information, and just as nattily as he’d arrived he was on his way

One of the parts I loved about Peter Pan (I only read it for the first time in 2009) was a scene where Peter believes he may really die as tidal water rises around him. The boy huddles on a small knoll. Suddenly, the avid and daring adventurer in him brightens up at the prospect of a new adventure--he's never died before, he realizes.

"In a world filled with interpretations; truth exist in only in nature. There you cannot even lie to yourself. She does not tolerate bullshit. You come before Her with respect, fully present and ready to give a 100%, anything less and She will have your head.

Ultimately going on a journey that puts your life at risk is not a decision made by the mind. Reason does not support it. When Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed mountains, he said “Because it is there.” I wonder if he knew he was talking about the need not the mountain.

My current view on the matter is that the issue of motivation is indeed beyond words or even petty needs. When we surrender to the unknown, faced with the magnitude of the powers that lies ahead, it forces the realization of how insignificant this body is compared to the forces that lie in our path. Someone recently pointed out to me that our greatest moments are the ones where we lose ourselves. Moments when we become not only more, but become everything.I have breathed in life in its purest form a few second here and there and all I want is more of it.

These moment by themselves are inadequate, they offer only brief respite. Grabbing onto them can be as destructive as any addiction. Their value lies in the glimpses they provide of what is possible. I have come to hope that perhaps the intensity and clarity of these experiences can be used for more than cheap thrills. There is more to this world than what we perceive and perhaps one day I can slip through the gap these experience briefly provide, to live permanently in that place of Boundlessness, also know as Happiness. Not the superficial ‘satisfaction of needs’ happiness, but the real thing. The happiness of Being one with the moment, no matter how it presents itself. Ultimate freedom." - "Because it is there," The Great White Explorer blog, by Hendri Coetze

Thank you, Hendri.

p.s.Crocodile symbol via BellaOnline.com: "[Although the crocodile signifies hidden danger, it can be transmuted into an ally.] If you can identify the emotions or situation that is lurking under the surface of your conscious mind, you can use that powerful energy as protection rather than experiencing it as a hidden danger. You can harness the energy and use it as a source of inspiration and creativity."

p.p.s. The blog headline is the very last sentence of the last post Henri wrote.

Bonus: Supposedly, my horoscope for 2011:

"The Strait of Gibraltar is the narrow passage between Europe and Africa where the Mediterranean Sea joins the Atlantic Ocean. According to legend, in ancient times the Latin phrase "ne plus ultra" was inscribed in the rock overlooking this gateway. It meant "not further beyond," and served as a warning to sailors not to venture out to the wild waters past the strait. Eventually, that cautionary advice became irrelevant, of course. With a sturdy vessel, skilled crew, good preparation, and expert knowledge based on the experience of others, venturing out past the "ne plus ultra" point wasn't dangerous. I hope you'll take that as your cue in 2011, Gemini. - freewillastrology.com for January 5th, 2011

At this point, I don't even care if venturing past the "ne plus ultra" signage is dangerous or not. The safe choice will surely kill me.

Jan 10, 2011

Often my turnaround point on my daily walk is a school (I like to walk in its grassy field and by the playground). However, Friday, I was approaching this school just as it was letting out so it was congested. I took a slightly different route to avoid it. Right in front of me was a building with the words:

HARAMind Body Fitness

I kept looking at that word, hara, and was intrigued, yet that was all I thought about it at the time. After I was home, I clicked on a link in a friend's email. It read:

"Deep within the belly, just below the navel, lies the soul center known variously in different traditions as the hara or tan tien, the womb or egg, abode of divine mother or shakti, and the seat of the feminine or mother aspect of God." - Karen Anderson and Barry Martin Snyder, LuminousSelf.com

Twice in two hours--hara. As far as I know, I'd never heard the word before. Talking with a few folks since many that have done martial arts it's a Chinese and Japanese concept.

""Hara" in Japanese is akin to the word gutsy in the English language. In English, "gut," "guts," and "gutsy" refer both to the belly and to someone who is adventurous, brave, persevering, earthy, attuned to her instinctual knowing." - Lisa Sarasohn, HonoringYourBelly.com

In case this sounds like sissy stuff, it is how the Samurais of old Japan navigated. In his book "Hara: The Vital Centre of Man," author Karlfried Graf Durkheim states that in Japanese hara means ‘belly’ and refers to a ‘state in which the individual has found his primal centre’:

"Man, as a living being, is not rooted in himself. Rather he is nourished, sustained and held in order by Nature whose laws operate without his knowledge and assistance." - Karlfried Graf Durkheim via HealingPhilosophy.com

It's tough to explain to anyone that you're "following your gut." Using any sense but thinking is seen as nonsense.

I had been feeling light-hearted and whole-belled stumbling into evidence of a somatic way of swimming the infinite currents of Infinite experience. Then yesterday, Sunday, I fell into a funk thinking about how much judgment I've endured by obeying this illogical navigation.

Oh, well, I climb underneath the covers and read a novel. It's the one I picked up so I could luxuriate my senses to a part of the world I want to live and play in: deep, rich, earthy viriditas-infused foothills crisscrossed by arteries of gurgling water.

A chapter in, there's a scene (click if you want to know the name of the book, otherwise don't if you hate spoilers) where a newcomer to a farming valley by way of marriage is struggling with feeling accepted by his family. In being integral to herself, she turns down growing tobacco. She's virtually branded as the foolish city lady. Here she's sharing with her sister-in-law's son:

"She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest and rubbing her elbows. "If there's any reason or rhyme to what I'm doing, I wish I knew it. I'm like a moth. Rickie, flying in spirals. You see how they do?" She nodded up at the lightbulb, where hordes of small, frantic wings glinted through the arc of brightness in circular paths through the air. They were everywhere once you bothered to notice them: like invisible molecules, Lusa thought, entirely filling up space with their looping trajectories. Rickie seemed surprised to realize this, that moths were everywhere. He stared upward with his mouth slightly open.

"A calf will run around that way when it's lost its mama and scared to death," he observed at last.

"They're not lost, though. Moths don't use their eyes the way we do; they use smell. They're tasting the air, taking samples from different places and comparing them, really fast. That's how they navigate. It gets them where they need to be, but it takes them forever to get there."

..."That's me. I can't seem to go in a straight line."

"Who says you have to?"

"I don't know, it's embarrassing. People are watching me. I'm figuring out how to farm by doing all the wrong things..."

. . .

They stood together watching the dizzying dance of silver wings through the cool air: tussock moths, tortricids, foresters, each one ignoring the others as it wheeled on its own path, urgent and true.

"Aunt Lusa, you worry too much."

"I'm a widow with a farm drowning in debt, standing in a barn that's about to fall on me. You're right. What, I should worry?"

He laughed. "About the family, I mean.""

She's already refused growing tobacco--the only viable means of surviving as a farmer, she's told. Yet in this conversation with Rickie, quite out of the ordinary blue, Lusa hits upon the solution. It's nothing important to your story, your life, as it was tailor-made for a city girl of Palestinian-Jewish descent that studied insects and moths at college who had just happened to live her own life trusting her gut, trusting her senses. (There's a reason I used the solution, not a solution.)

"It is the blessing of our incarnation that the body can’t be fooled; in fact, it feels the full brunt of our driven behavior." - Reginald Ray, "To Touch Enlightenment with the Body", Shambala Sun, Jan 2003

Bonus: I recall hearing Loch Kelly say that after the awakening, it was as if his brain dropped into his heart, and his heart dropped into his belly. From that perspective, this passage from Don Juan, the Toltec shaman makes much more "sense."

"Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know. The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.

For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly." - excerpted from Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada